3 Pots for the Future: A Connective Practice for 'Making Social Honey'
3 Pots for the Future : Social Sculpture Lab, documenta Archive. Copyright Shelley Sacks 2021
> 3 POTS for the FUTURE is an inspiring connective imagination practice for communities of individuals, organisations, networks, and teams to identify, experience and reflect on the capacities we need to shape a living future.
3 Pots for the Future is a “social honey” making practice working with the pot as an archetype of containment and transformation. As a container it protects what is precious. As a crucible it is a place for transforming difficulties and ‘waste’ into ‘gold’.
It introduces participants to the “inner workspace” where we use the ‘invisible materials’ of social sculpture to explore and gather what is valuable for the future - on both an individual and collective level.
Contemplative drawing, deep listening and voicing are used as ways of uncovering perceptions, understandings and capacities in the first pot of ‘self’, and in the second pot of ‘society’. This expands our perception of the human being. It helps us see the differences between human beings and machines, and the role humans must play to repair and move beyond a world greatly damaged by humans.
The vision and capacities needed for a living future emerge through working together in the inner workspace. This generates the future-substance in the third pot which includes ‘seeds’ for transformative initiatives.
“This was a truly inspiring process for my philosophy students, parents and teachers, as well as for me. Working both individually and collectively using Shelley Sacks’ ‘inner workspace’ method, we explored our feelings and thoughts about the future, distinguished between the human being and machines, and identified the capacities we have and need to develop the human being and to protect life. We also discovered very useful and fascinating new forms of imaginal thinking-together and ‘making social honey’, and the difference between connective moral imagination and disconnected fantasies. ”
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Contact Shelley: info@socialsculpturelab.com
ORIGINS OF THE PROCESS: This process was originally developed by Shelley Sacks for the Social Sculpture Lab in 2021, hosted by the documenta Archive in Kassel, Germany, for the Joseph Beuys Centenary.
During the 100-day lab, contributors were invited to share how they see the substance for a living future, left to us by Joseph Beuys.
Some of these 2021 contributions - made live in Kassel by visitors to the Social Sculpture Lab and online - will be included a publication entitled: A Gift for Joseph Beuys.